That’s part of it, but it’s certainly ALSO a mechanism to encourage people to use an account, or to register if they haven’t, because that’s more trackable and monetisable.

Same reason why when you hit an X post or an Instagram post it normally lets you see a little tease but roadblocks you to sign in as soon as you start scrolling. They want you signed in for their own reasons.

If google wanted, they could implement a range of measures to disincentivise bots, like not counting views apart from signed-in users so there’s less reason for bots to be engaging with the platform, but that also is bad for their ad view monetisation metrics so they surely don’t want to do that. They’d rather inconvenience the user.